head asploded

life is pretty difficult right now. Juggling 4 studios, full time job, debt, social life, family life, fraternity business and the like is pretty hard. I think this semester I really have overdone it and maaaay have scooped too much onto my plate... Though its hard to admit, this is probably the most stressed I have ever felt in my life.

Of the different fronts, school is easy to pick out as difficult because 4 studio classes requires a LOT of time. I have spent close to 30 some odd hours on my current printmaking project. From development to drawing on the litho stone, it has been a long way (the tusch wash is drying right now so I can add a 2nd layer). Luckily Monday night the project deadline got pushed from Tuesday (yesterday) to Thursday giving me more (still not enough) time to complete it. Tonight(this morning) I will have completely drawn/transfered/painted my entire image onto the stone leaving tomorrow to etch and print!!

Moving on, we have Ceramics which has a small lull right now between projects (new one assinged tomorrow though, so dont worry about this class being easy).

Photo due later this month is a still life assignment, but it might be hard coming up with a still life that doesnt suck... as so many do.

Life drawing, Thursday we are starting our 13hr self portrait (I hate looking at myself after a 1hr drawing or three... cant wait to see how 13hrs goes). On the plus side, drawing naked ladies is a fun way to spend 3hrs on T/Th evenings. Naked dudes... not so much.

Art History.. still have the same lame professor with the monotone voice that cant cover any material that he needs to before a test... bleh. Not too motivated for this class.

So, on to work.

We have what is called hell week next week. 2 concerts, a family show (with 3 shows) bball kickoff, cheer camp all within 10 days or so.... I dont want to go into that anymore

Also, I am caught in the battle between my love of work, and my desire to not fail. It is almost getting hard to work enough hours to make rent/utilities/living expenses and still be a functional student... budgets are tight now, and starting the school year with no money (yay Italy/new truck) was not helpful at all.

Fraternity.

I am chairing the committee that is planning a regional conference in December with a lot of work still to do. I have limited bodies available to help knock work out, and after trying to get things started last spring and being held up, now I am being rushed to complete my tasks (at least this one isnt 100% my fault).

Life.

I crashed my truck on Sunday... long story, becuase SC sucks, I am at fault. (Also, apparently turn signals are not mandatory... (FUCK SOUTH CAROLINA LAWS))

Dealing with insurance is fun since I have little to few hours during the work day available to do business.

On that note, I have been needing to see a dentist for some time, but my schedule is not only so packed that I dont know when I could possible make it to the appt. but I havnet even had time to call them up... fml

It is good to let this out. Tonight I was almost at a breaking point, but some comfort food (Paws Diner) and some relaxing time (bout an hour total during dinner) got me to a better state. I went to the studio and knocked out some work. Unfortunately I cant half ass my work (well, work that I care about anyways) so I am stuck with a very time intensive process tonight (about an hour between each step) so I am pulling an all nighter till work at 6:30am... bleh

Anyways, time to go back to the studio... (<- that is my life it seems)

I wish you were still in that chair at my table.

IAAM 2009 Part III (Sometime after the fact..)

So its been quite a while since I last updated, and I am going to start off with a quick wrap-up of IAAM. I last left off Saturday night (Sunday morning) after the HOB party.
Well, Sunday comes around and for you fine readers I will spare the details of the day, however after sessions and working on the floor and such the LJC crew was leaving the convention center heading to the hotel. Whilst crossing the bridge, we ran into Brenda Pennington (shes important to the operations of IAAM.. or something... maybe).
After a quick exchange, the course of the night changed. Brenda had a spare invite to the Centerplate dinner which I readily accepted and parted ways with the Clemson crew. Brenda and I had really met on Friday at the Foundation Friday Golf Tourney when I had tried to throw her out of a golf cart (long story).

After waiting in the Westin for a while a shuttle came and picked up all of the patrons for that dinner. There were about 15 of us that packed into two vans and headed out. We arrived at a fancy little place and were ushered through a nice looking restaurant area to a private room in the back with a two piece acoustic band and an open bar. Everyone was personally greeted and encouraged to mingle until all the guests had arrived. All in all there were 4 tables with 8 people each making this a very exclusive event.
the table that I ended up being at featured the GM for the Dallas convention center as well as the President of Centerplate among others. The conversations were plentiful preceding the meal, however when the menus arrived attention was quickly redirected. I choose the veal medallions with a salad. Other options included crab cake appetizers or steak entrees, all of which seemed good.
Dinner came and went with amazing food and some moving speeches from the staff of Centerplate. Desert was served with coffee and eventually people started to pitter out. While eating some dinner another gentleman from the Dallas convention center came over to the table I was at and struck up a conversation with the GM. I interjected something which elicited a chuckle followed by something close to a job offer. As it may turn out, I might intern in Dallas next summer should things go as planned.
The night didnt end there, no sir it did not! The next event on the docket was the Miller cruise. Miller (as in the beer co) rented out a party boat for the night and was leaving the dock soon after I got back to the hotel. I quickly changed clothes and headed to the boat to board. Unfortunately I didnt have a boarding pass, but luckily due to my social engineering abilities, I was able to manipulate myself onto the boat (go me!).
The boat was essentially three levels. The bottom floor featured a bar and dance floor, the 2nd floor had a balcony on the rear of the ship and a hole through to the dance floor below and a bar, the 3rd floor was the roof of the boat it had some tables and... a bar!
After scouting out the boat quickly, I met up with the Clemson contingency and hung out for a while and then ran into Cindy Phil and Corey. One of the highlights (highlifes?) of the cruise was the cigar bar on level two. Quality cigars were up for grabs as well as cigar cutters and of course matches. I was able to make it home with a Romeo&Julieta as well as a Macanudo and I smoked a playboy brand cigar on the boat. On that note, its a pain trying to lite a cigar with matches on the roof of the boat.
Cindy, Me, Phil:
After the boat did a short tour around the Boston harbor (30 min out, 30 min back-ish) we all left and went back to the seaport bar because it was right next to the dock! It was near closing time, so we were only able to get one round of drinks (and that bartender was a prick).

Once again, this primarily concludes Saturday night (and as always, Monday morning).

The Jump

So this past weekend there wasn't too much to do so my buddy Heath decided to organize a small trip to the lake. As the plans unfolded, we decided to meet at the LJC at 2PM on Sunday and head out to the lake to have some fun, returning probably around 7PM.

Sunday morning rolls around and while I am making some lunch it is called to my attention that we were not heading to the lake, but taking a drive into NC to see some water falls. I was none-the-less excited about this and finished eating to head out.

Still having in my mind that we going to the lake, I dressed as such. Bathing suit, flip flops, bag with a towel, change of clothes, and of course some red kool-aid.

We set off and drove for over an hour into the NC wilderness. We ended up in Sapphire, NC which is in the Nantahala Wilderness, which coincidentally is where I will be on Thursday white water rafting.

We entered Gorges St. Park and drove down the entrance. We soon passed the parking lot where Heath had parked before, however it was closed at this time. This meant that we had to drive another 2 miles down the park road to the new parking lot where the new trail heads where.

In previous years, the path to Turtleback falls was not an recognized trail, so you had to know where you were going. Unfortunately we were parked about 3 miles away from the start of that trail so we used the official park trail. This trail was a nice trail for day hikers and the generally inexperienced that probably traverse these trails. However to the seasoned hiker a gravel trail is a nuisance. More so, to someone in nothing more than shower flip flops the sharp and pointy gravel did not treat the feet well at all.
Luckily the 2nd half of the trail was dirt (once we left the NC St. park and entered the US park services).

The total trail was listed as 1.5 mi to Rainbow falls, our first scenic overlook. Rainbow Falls are an impressive sight, probably falling 150ft plus and crashing into a skewed pile of rocks on the bottom. Just past that is a large pool with people lounging around.

We continued out journey another 3/10 of a mile to Turtleback falls. These falls were probably 25 ft tall, however the edge was curved downwards, looking like a turtle's back (get it??). This allowed one to slide over the edge of the falls and plunge down about 20 or so feet into a nice deep (cold) pool of water. To get to the top of the falls, there was a nice rope in place that you could literally climb up the side of the face to get to the top.

After a few slides down the turtleback falls, I went upstream a little because I saw a nice swift moving patch of water... Let me just say that I am not always the brightest. I slid into the flow and started to get carried away, however as it dawned upon me later, the reason that no one else was sliding down these rocks was because they were somewhat sharp, and not pleasant to slide down...
Worse yet was that when I finally regained control of myself and stood up, I was covered in leeches... *UGH*.
I tried to wipe them all off, but there were to many leeches, too many places, and they would hang on like a mo-fo.

I quickly went back downstream and went off the edge of the falls down 20 something feet into the cool water. This was enough to get my body leech free which I was very excited about.

Shortly after this escapade, we left turtleback falls and continued to rainbow falls where a cliff was point out to me. From the trail which was near the top of the falls, it looked only 15-20ft above the water, just a little more than a high dive. However upon descending the steep and winding trail (not easy in flip flops) the cliff grew some.

At the edge of the pool, we watched Heath scale the side of the cliff using tree roots and patches of dirt as a ladder. He worked his way out onto the ledge and then proceeded to jump into the pool.
Upon seeing that Heath was in fact not dead, two more of us continued on up to jump. We climbed the same route, and ended up eventually on the ledge. From up there the water looked a good 50 feet away... After getting mentally prepared to jump, I took one step. Then the next step. Then into the third and final step, I realized that I didnt know what the crap I was doing and that I could quite possibly die in a matter of seconds. At once I didnt want to jump, however with my momentum, there was no turning back. I planted my last foot and shot off the edge of the cliff and looking down thought I was going to fall into the rocks at the base. Luckily the mind is frail and cant think well under these circumstances, because obviously I didn't hit those rocks and instead plunged into the pool in a semi cannonball form.

The thrill and rush of excitement followed the splash and instantly I was glad that I had climbed and jumped. Shortly afterwards, Heath climbed back up with AJ. After a long long wait (with numerous attempts to back out) AJ finally jumped off the cliff with Heath simultaneously.

AJ and Heath jumping:


After a long hike back to the cars in my dying shower flops we were set to head home.

IAAM 2009 Part II

So Saturday morning starts off no frills. I attended some valuable sessions in the morning, and then spent a lot of time in the morning preparing for BEEResponsible which was a panel I was on about serving Beer on a campus and the responsibilities involved.
The fun really started after the session when I went to join my Team Foundation brethren on the floor preparing for the trade show opening that night.

Here is the 2009 Team Foundation (well, most of us anyways) getting ready for the grand opening.

After the trade show business wound down, it was time to catch a bus off to the ticketmaster party. I ended up working a little bit late and after waiting for Kevin to get to the BCEC, we were lucky enough to board the last bus to the party which was hosted at the House of Blues. After a 30-40min. bus ride, we arrived right outside of Fenway park and were escorted into the "Foundation" room at the HOB which is their reserve able for private events area.
The interior decorations of these rooms were extraordinary. Ancient rugs, handmade doors, trippy lights, they were missing nothing.
Me and Kevin met up with Zach and Dusty at the party. Marty was there but busy and Wendy... well I didn't see her at least. None of the girls came with us to the party for their own reasons so I was inclined to meet other people. I met a couple of guys at the bar and we chatted about the ridiculous line for beers.
A little later I met Shannon and Cindy two other student volunteers. And yet later on I met Phillip and Corey at some point in time.
The coolest part of the HOB night was when I got one of the waitresses to show me around on a little tour. She told me a bunch of cool facts like:

• The entire floor is covered with Persian rugs that were stitched together on the spot to create one gigantic rug.
• The manager's office has an 1100 year old door that they have yet to put a lock on because no locksmith want's to attempt it.
• All of the statues are over 300 years old
• There are doors mounted to the ceiling to represent a pathway to heaven. (I think she related this to some religion..)
• And many others

The waitress even took me into the concert side of the HOB where they had the sneaker-somethigns playing a show. It was really cool to see the infastructure that they have methodically imporved on time after time, venue after venue to reach this final note in which they have two or three layouts that all HOBs are built to.

The HOB blues night was awesome in its own regards, however all too soon the lights were on and the staff was shooing us out. I hung out for a while talking with Jane and her husband (actualy a rocket scientist) until there were but a few student volunteers and misc folks left.

I ended up getting my number to the waitress who seemed interested in hanging out after her shift, and we went out on the town (well street at least).

We ventured down the street to a bar called Game Time, or Game On!, or something like that and got some beers. We of course being me, Cindy, Corey, Shannon, and Phil. We grabbed a few drinks for a good cause, Phil's birthday before cabbing it back to the hotels. Thus ending another awesome day in Boston.

And heres me in front of Fenway Park:

Ahoy Ahoy (from Boston)

So time for the fact for the day. Alexander Grahm Bell and Thomas Edison never really saw eye to eye, in fact they disagreed on many subjects. One in particular was telephone greetings.
Though Thomas Edison is often credited as the "inventor" of the word 'hello' the word can be seen penned by Mark Twain years before Edison was quoted with it.
Contrastly, Bell suggested the word 'ahoy' as a greeting on the phones. Luckily for us, the only person to adopt this phrase was one C. Montgomery Burns (from the simpsons) who's use of the word implies his elderly status.
Oddly enough, Bell's technology was picked up and "Edison's" phrase was as well. This no doubt irked the other!

In other news, I am in Boston right now for the International Association of Assembly Managers (IAAM) conference. I have been lucky enough to attend the past two summers in Salt Lake City, Utah and Anaheim, California. Both times, I had a great time, met a ton of people, and networked for 6 days with the top people in this industry.
I think now more then ever, my life goals are becoming clear. I can see my path laid out in front pf me, and I am eager to jump head first into this industry and have a blast doing it.
So back to this conference. I am student volunteering again which means I am required to work throughout the conference on various tasks. I am pimpin enough to be on the Foundation crew again (we have our own secret handshake) which means I get the best jobs.
Friday was the foundation tournament which is where all the top people go and play a round of golf, drink (network), and have a great time with their long time friends. Unfortunately, Friday was a very nasty day out. Waking up at 4AM to a cold, raining, windy day was the best way to roll out of bed, but I persevered and made it through a bitterly cold day driving golf carts (that was fun, though I may or may not have gotten hypothermia (j/k (but not really))).
After that, we (the student volunteers) were invited to the President's reception. This was an invite only shindig so none of the boss men (or women) were there so we were on our own. I also felt like a bit of a tool since everyone there was dressed to the nines and I was in my Clemson polo (representing!!).
After that was the young professionals mixer at the Westin. Getting there was epic, as is most everything I do. After wandering around the hotel and getting misguided directions, ("WTH there is no concourse button!?!") we made it. Much like last year, we were given coupons for drinks and told to network.

After much networking, the bar closed so we went out on the town. We went down to the seaport bar which was featuring karaoke. When I went up to request a song, the DJ informed me that he was peacing out. (It was midnight after all)
After haning out for a while, the boss men put a significant amount of money in the jukebox and selected a nice long playlist full of country hits. (we survived)
As the night was winding down, we eventually peaced out and all went our seperate ways.

And thusly concludes Friday (well actually Saturday morning...)
More later!

xXx

Today I finally watched xXx in its entirety. I have tried to watch this movie many times before including on the most amazing home entertainment system that my friend had in UV (after a party, I passed out during the opening club scene and woke up during the credits) and I even had it recorded on my DVR for a while with no successful attempts at watching it.
This time however, I popped in the DVD that I acquired some time ago and enjoyed the movie start to finish with limited interruptions.
What I can pass on to you is that this movie, while rated 5.5 out of 10 on IMDB is a suitable Sunday afternoon flick. There is just about everything a man could want in this movie. Women (most scantily clad), cars, guns, explosions, drugs... its pretty much a dude-tastic time.
Watch this movie if you want to have grand delusions that you too might someday jump from a plane into an avalanche or para sail from a car to a boat to save most of Europe.
If any of those scenarios apply you will absolutely love this movie. Otherwise it is just a good movie with some col sh!t happening.

Mmmmmmmmmm Big Mac

So today is a McDonald's themed post for a few various reasons.

I was browsing around when I found a link a video of Billy Mays ordering food at a McDonald's:

This video is amazing because Billy Mays is pretty much awesome, and its at McDonald's which reminded me of this other video, the Big Mac Rap:

Both of these videos reminded me of my time in Genoa when I actually went to a McDonald's. This McDonald's was in a mall at the port and looked the part. The food was very much the same, the fries were far saltier. Oh, and they served beer.

Craigslist

So for a while I was looking for my new car on craigslist.. which was an endeavor in itself...

One thing that always irritated me was that the people on craigslist are all morons.

There is only one thing I would like to say to them:

SELL != SALE

You do not need to SALE your car,

You most certainly do not have your tv for SELL...

You have to SELL your car to make alimony payments.

You have your tv for SALE so you can buy more meth, and its probably stolen...

It's not so hard people...

Tech News: I

"I think maybe sometime in the future, we should maybe entertain removing it," he said. "It's one of those things you kind of have to approach with caution. There might be some people out there who just really like their 'Caps Lock' key for whatever reason."

Haha, great history of the keyboard!

This Week in Weird: I

So this week has been pretty tragic so far as the media would have me to feel.
Below are a bunch of newsworthy stories that are national quality news, but have no impact on day to day life of 99% of the nation.

So first up in this weeks list of uncanny coincidences: Farrah Fawcett's Death

This week had a series of celebrity deaths that we should all be overly concerned about and let them eclipse the non-important things in life like the tyranny goining on in Iran, or the stock market, or pretty much anything that could remotely be deemed important by the competent.

Sadly for Farrah who had just finished a documentray about her life and her soon to be passing, she too was eclipsed by a larger name, Michael Jackson, who passed but a few hours after her.

On that note, check Obama's comments on Michael Jackson... does everyone seem to forget that whole peodophelia thing a few years back? Oh well... one thing we certainly wont foget soon is that the South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford recently went missing.

It was discovered over the holiday weekend that Sanford was missing and soon his staff realized that no one knew where he was... Apparently someone did, because the truth surfaced that he was hiking the appalachain trail.

It wasnt until mid week when Sanford returned on a plane from the AT that the true truth surfaced and it was revealed that he went to Argentina instead of the AT to "clear his head."

Now one notable thing here is that if Sanford were to have lied to his staff about his whereabouts over father's day weekend, he would be breaking the federal wire fraud law, punishable with 20 years in camp cupcake.

The notable part is that 20 years is the maximum charge for 14 counts of child molestation, profiding alcohol to minors, and many more charges. Why is this relevant? Michael Jackson, was originally indicted with these charges, though he later got acquited...

I wonder, if it's so easy to get off of 14 counts of child molestation... is there any reason to even bother bringing up charges against Sanford... all he did was have an affair which in no way compares to rape...

Anyways, real tragedy struck this morning when Billy Mays was found dead inside his house.

Billy Mays was the late night TV infomercial dude that had struck a chord with many people who are up late watching crappy TV. His infomercials were actualy worth watching... if you were up really late, and there was nothing else on...

Well, at least after this crazy week we still have Vince with ShamWoW!!!

I am come home!

So this past week has been ridiculous!
To start where we left off, I was in Carrara with Stefania, my cousin in Italy.

We went out for some drinks that night and went to a nice little bar within walking distance on her flat. Much like many other nice bars in Italy, this place served apertivos if you got drinks, also, much like the other places that serve the apertivos, you can easily make a meal out of these and skip dinner all together, luckily that wasn't the plan this night and we went out to a nice dinner instead.

By nice dinner, I don't mean expensive because this place seemed fairly hole in the wall (they have Christmas lights year round for instance). I tried a local dish _________ (I will fill in the name when I remember it)which was a meat ravioli. Very heavy, very filling, and VERY delicious. Chef Boyardee can't touch this dish.
For the second course I decided that I wanted to be brave and adventurous (and possibly a little stupid) and try trepe [tripe]. Trepe for those of you not in the know is made from the first three chambers of a cow's stomach. Mmmmmmmm!
For human consumption (its also favored by dogs apparently) it is thoroughly washed and cleaned in a most meticulous fashion (good)...

So, the trepe was cooked up in a somewhat spicy sauce.. and I managed to eat a few pieces of it, however the smell I couldn't take. Unfortunately I couldn't get over the... unique smell that the first three chambers of a cow's stomach...
Luckily Stefania enjoys trepe and thought it was really good and ate some of it, but I was still a little disappointed in myself.

I like to live life without holding back much, and I will pretty much try anything once to see what its like.. and I have learned on this trip that animal innards dont really do it for me.. We were served a dish in Orvieto that contained a chunk of liver that was most unsavory (reminded me of liverwurst which I am fairly sure I was scarred as a child by). So for this trip it was 0/2 for animal innards that were unsavory to me.. I think I might cut my losses and extrapolate that into assuming that animal innards aren't meant to be eaten.

So anyways, enough of animals, and onto the alcohol!

When we sat down at dinner, we were served an aperitivo which as defined is an alcoholic drink designed to stimulate the appetite.
During dinner we had some delicious wine (its all really good... I guess if I become a connoisseur of wine I can start not liking certain bottles... until then, its all good!).
After dinner was when the fun started...

To Be Continued!

I couldnt think of something witty for the title...

So I spent the last two nights in Genova enjoying all that the city has to offer. From it's industrial port right next to the centro to the slums of Brin, I have seen it all!

But seriously, I did go to the aquarium which was a lousy experience due to the little hooligans that were running rampant through the aquarium as well as all the old people who were running rampant through the museum.. bleh.

Luckily, after the aquarium, I went to the BIOSHPERE which sounds really cool and like Pauly Shore might be there, but it actually is only like a 50' diameter sphere with a terrarium environment inside. There were some really cool plants that were flowering as well as these annoying pink birds that pooped every 30 seconds. No kidding.

That about wraps up day two if you include an epic search for awesome food that followed, ending in some Indian cusine.

Today I started the day with the Mueseo dell Culturale which was a mueseum of oddities that a ship captain had collected throughout his years in service.
The mueseo featured several really cool things, but one unique thing was seeing a piece of the Great Wall of China next to a piece of the great pyramids, next to a stuffed platypus...
Oddities indeed.

After that I hopped on a train to Carrara where the Lambruschi's hail from and I met up with Stefania, my cousin that I have never met before toeday.

We went to the beach and relaxed for a few hours. I played some ball in the surf for what seemed like hours but was apparently only 40 min. Then I caught some rays and chatted with Stefania for a while after that.
It was an awesome relaxing experience that I really needed after 4 weeks in a high stress fast paced environment.

Peace for now, its time to shower up and head out to the bar, then to the restaurant, then to the bar again!

AHH Im on my own!!

So I have been bumming around Europe since Tuesday and it has been a blast!
So far I have gone with two people I met on the train from Vencie to Milan (Lily and Hector) to Lake Como which is a beautiful place in north Italy.
We hiked up a mountain for an awesome veiw, paddle boated across a lake, and went to the Tempio Voltari (Volt Mueseum, Dad you would have loved this, I took plenty of pictures).

We from there went into Switzerland to a town called Bellinzona (Bellisima might as well have been). There was little to nothing in this town but an AWESOME castle that you could seriously hurt yourself in-around (I scrapped myself up a bit).
Also, while in this town, we stayed in a restaurant that had rooms for rent!!!???

The best part about this town was that I went out that night and stumbled upon a railroad worker party in their mechacnical shops. I drank a lot a lot a lot of beer with people who didnt even speak English (only one did out of the group) and it was a blast!!
After that party ended, we went to a bar in town for a round, and then of all the random things that could ever happen. I ended up at a beach rave until sunrise.
These experiences have been mind blowing, and I still have a long way to go!

I dont know if I will have time for pictures until I get back to the states, but I will try to keep everyone somewhat posted.

Tonight and possibly tomorrow I am in Genova at a youth hostel and after that I think I am meeting up with Stefania to see Massa and Carrara.

Peace everyone, I hope the states are treating you all well!

Artwork Highligths

So obviously I came to Italy for a reaosn, and that was to do some art!
Here are a few pieces that I feel are fairly resovled (most of what we are doing is sketching, and I dont have the patience to upload that many drawings either).


This is a charcoal frawing from the Roman Forums. Time: 20 min or so


This is the Composition that was supposed to summarize our experience in Rome.
I combined elements from the 4 rivers foutain (the fish), The Pantheon (the top bit of the circle), The Colosseum (The bottom bit of the circle), The Bourghesse House Sculptures (The chain), various organs (The pipes/fins) and some various achitecture seen arouns. The overall composition is to reflect the crazy fast paced nature of our experience in Rome, and how things seem to blend together when you have 3 days to see all the city has to offer (or something like that).


A sketch of a penthouse in Orvieto.

Peace!

Orvieto

So, today is somewhat of a free day.
I could be workingon a project due Monday, but instead I am taking some time to upload pictures for all of you folks so you can keep tabs with what exciting things I am up to.
Our time in Orvieto is almost up, but at least it will end with a bang.

Tonight after dinner, there are a series of horse races that will be happening in the city, I can only hope to witness those events unfold. Becuase of these races, and a series of concerts also happening tonight (and I saw kegerators there) I doubt that I will be working much tonight on our projects as well.

Tomorrow (Sunday) willbe a religious holiday. There is an elaborate setup in front of the Duomo and I have been told that fireworks and pidgeons are involved... hopefully not in conjunction... eww.

So this weekend will be a lot of big events, and the coming week will be rushed. Wednesday we will leave Orvieto for Firenze (Florence) and that will be a whirwind 4 days followed by a whirlwind 2 days in Venice. After that I will be meeting up with Stefania sometime in the 5 or so days following that to visit Massa Carrara where the Lambruschis are from!

In no specific order...
Here is the East side of the Duomo. Directly behind the Duomo is where we are staying in the villa Mercede.
This picture was taken from the top of Torre del Moro which is the clock tower you can see at the end of the last post in the middle of Orvieto. I dont remeber how many stairs they said it was to the top, but I swear is was no less than 8,000... ugh.


Hree is a picture of Il Gato, a cat that lives behind Villa Mercede that is 22 years old...


And here is a picture of caves beneath Orvieto... I will upload another better one later on:


Here is a shot of the caves (again). This is a dove cove as the tour guide called it. The people of Orvieto carved these caves into the faces of cliffs for 300 years to allow pidgeons to nest there. They were an ingenious design. The holes attracted pidgeos, the windows allowed the pidgeons to feed and drink on their own and return to their nest at their own will. Whats more, to the left of the door way, you can see a groove cut into the wall. This allowed rain water from above to be collected from the roofs above and drain into these caves. The water would pool into cisterns and the people would clean the pidgeon poo out of the caves with it. Then the people would sell the poo as fertilizer. Crazy!

Lake Day

So we just got back to Orvieto from our day trip to Chivita and Bolsena.

We headed out of Orvieto at 9am this morning and drove about 30min to Chivita.
Now before I get into Chivita, the vans we take are interesting, I need to take a picture of them sometime. They are 8 passenger vans, and I swear these things are the largest cars in Italy that I have seen. They are huge, and barely fit down the tiny winding roads, the drivers drive the heck out of them, recklessly... but somehow we have managed to not get hit, or crash, etc etc.
So, Chivita, This town is like the Centralia, PA (google it) of Italy. It is a town that is pretty much falling off a cliff.. but the whole town is on a plateau... so the whole thing is slowly falling apart. I think we were told that about 12 people still live in the town.


The town does offer amazing views, and it is absurd seeing doors and windows that go nowhere... and having those windows to nowhere right next to someones living room window...


The best part of the trip was the we got hustled by this really old lady. We were walking down the main path in the town and we were greeted by this old lady who promised an amazing terrazzo through a little doorway. We went through and sure enough there was an amazing terrazzo with an awesome view, and it was all groovy.
We went to leave the awesome terrazzo with the awesome view, and the old lady was blocking the door. She was demanding that we pay for being on her terrazzo! crazy indeed...

Me on the terrazzo:


On the way out of the town, we stopped by the bathrooms... and by bathroom, I mean hole in the floor...



So moving along, we left that town since it offers little but an awesome view, and we made our way to Bolsena.

Bolsena is a volcano (or Stromboli as we found out that means volcano in Italian) that blew a long time ago. To make a long story short, it is now a lake. A beautiful lake that you should all go to.


We first went to the duomo there and a small museum to get the scholarly stuff out of the way. At the Duomo were some catacombs we were allowed to peruse around and read the history of. Here is a shot inside, the catacombs were probably about 20' high walls full of niches where bodies were buried, the tunnels went back a lot farther than we were allowed to go, but the area we could wander in was minimum 150'-200' of tunnels in this manner:


We then we made our way down to the lake where we would spend a few hours.
My group of people wandered down the beach and found this nice little restaurant that was on the beach, so we grabbed some drinks, some lunch, and enjoyed watching the lake and stuff.
After that we all met up at the beach and enjoyed the lake like nothing else. I was wandering up and down the beach, and there were tons of pieces of terra cotta in the sand (I use that term loosely) under the water. Some of the pieces has glaze on them, some has grooves, designs, etc, etc.
My jeans ended up getting wet, and didn't quite have time to dry out before piling in the vans and heading back.

Here is me looking conteplative on the shore:


Here is Orvieto on our return so you can see what the city looks like!


And... "Its made of people"

Dum Diddy Dum Dum

Music...

Its bad enough in America to listen to the radio and hear the same 20 songs on every station interspersed with commericals that take up a large portion of the airwaves.

I could go on about the music machine in america, but thats not the point.

When I came to Italy last time, I remeber hearing new and innovative songs, that is where I first heard of the Gorillaz (who are amazing) and lots of other really cool songs.

This time, in Rome, our hotel had TV (no TV in Orvieto) and so I wathced some News programming in the mornings while getting ready for the day. Apparently music videos are news, because from 7-8am that is what was on. Sadly, I saw very very very few songs that I didnt already know. There were a couple that I will have to look up when I get back home, but other than that it has been pretty much like watching MTV in america (except that there actualy WERE music videos).

To add insult to injury, restaurants here play a lot of our top 40 songs. Last night we went to a very nice restaurant that was literaly down a few flights of stairs and inside some caves that date back to the ancient Eutruscans. Sadly, instead of some nice clichè Italian music, we heard Lady Gaga, Sting, the Police, and pretty much anything you could expect in the states. It was a weird mish mash of music, and it didnt really fit a dinner that was 25 Euros or about $40... (yea it was expensive, but it was amazing!)

Music I have liked here:

• Bastard Sons of Dioniso (need to wait till I have faster internet to bother figuring out which song I heard) check them out though!
• The random accordian dude that walks around and harasses you for change between songs
• The big ole pipe organ in the Duomo
• The dude that stands outside the Duomo that plays his violin for change
• The dude that plays the jazz sax outside of the Duomo for change (or maybe for fun, he was drinking beer...)
  

The moment is fleeting...

So since time here is short (in Italy and in the internet caffe) I wont be typeing too much today.. but I do have some interesting pictures.

First up is the duomo in Orvieto, this beatiful cathedral is only a few steps outside of our monastary that we are staying in, so I get to see it every day.


The entire builging is made out of beautiful white and black stone, on the sides there is a horizontal striping with these blocks that emphasizes curves and any niches and the such. The front is all about being vertical and the lines, the towers, everything about it screams a message about reachign towards the heavens (or so our tour guide explaind on the first day (in Italian mind you!)).

Inside the duomo is equally impressive, every facet of this building is ornately detailed, and they did not miss any areas at all when decorating this duomo. Words cant describe how tiny the details are that they paid attention to, but it is phenomenal.

Inside they also have the most impressive pipe organ pipe array that I have ever seen, it is rediculous...



This pipe box is cray! It is mounted 40' over the floor and measures (probably) about 20' deep 40' wide, and over 75' tall...
I consider myself lucky that I went to church this morning and got to hear that beautiful piece of art the way it was meant.

Next up,
We took a day trip to Assisi on Friday and I was excited because I remember going to Assisi last time I was in Italy, and I remebered the "huge field with the big cross" that I was telling all the Clemson folk about. When we got there, this field was the last thing we saw, so I had actualy started to doubt myself..



And lastly, we went down into the Orvieto caves this week and breifly, Orvieto was basically the Pope's bat cave in the days past. This mountain town was the prefect area to lay low because it is on a mountain, so its is easy to turn into a fortress, the caves attract pidgeons (and it is a local delicacy) as a food source, they well their own water... and pretty much is is the perfect caslte, un seigeable and it looks good also.
We were told that the Eutruscans had built this town and it was the perfect castle... to which I wondered.. if it is the perfect castle, why did they get the boot from here?



Thats me and Mardita sporting some hard hats to we didnt bruise our noggins!

Busy busy busy

So we are getting into our pace at Orvieto, the typical schedule is:
8:30 -11:30 Drawing
Lunch
12:30-2:30 Drawing
3:00-5:00 Italian
7:45 Dinner
9ish Freedom

Almost every night me and some of the girls have gone out on the town to fully experience this journey, and its fair to say that the Italians wait till night to come out. At about 11pm the streets are crowded and full of people have a great time.

Last night we met up with the waiters from our 2nd dinner which was at the Zepplin (great food). Of the waiters, interestingly enough, none are Italian. There is one Albanian who only speaks Italian and the other 3-4 are American and are living in Orvieto for free and being paid $5 a day. Anywho,s we met up with them and our teacher walked by trying to get minutes put onto his phone, Eris (the Albanian) took about 30s on the phone and it was working fine (amazing what one can do who understands the automated Italian message).
After that we wandered down the via and went to a nice wine bar. Many bottles of wine later I discovered that they had a bottle of Lambrusco wine, so I certainly got that and the table enjoyed it. I also found out sadly that the Lambrusco wine is not.. really favored over here... °sigh°

It was a good night, and hanging out with Italians is awesome, you can really learn a lot of the language that way.

Anyways, no pics today, I forgot to bring the card reader to the school, but I can assure you that this town is awesome.

What are the odds..

So, last night was the last night in rome, and it was a great time. We went out to the Yellow bar which we were at the night before as well, and this time decided to play a round of beer pong (yes, its in Italy as well and they advertise it at this particular bar).
We went downstairs to the pong room and against all odds we happened walked in to this batr on this side of the world in this huge town of Rome and found a USC fan who wanted to run his mouth.
I dont understand how exactly we happened to choose this bar in particular, but at least he was out numbered. Unfortunately... we did not help the Clemson cause because we ended up losing the game to the USC dude and his buddy... not a good thing, but it was a good time, and we were haging out with them later on that night as well...

And now time for something different:

On Saturday we went to the ancient forums, the pantheon, and the Colosseum. At the Colosseum, it was my turn to be a tour guide, so I lead the group around and educated them about everything from Nero to the jewish slaves (its true) and got a rousing appluase.

Plus to make thing better, the term dapper has been used to describe me again!

Im out for now, expect more later on, we are just settling into Orvieto, and if I never return to USA... I will be in this town.
Here is the view from my room, and yes that is a freaking castle!

When in Rome...

So these past two (one and a half really) days in Rome have been a blast. It all started quite negatively though with us waiting for about 2 hours in the airport for our ride that never decided to show up... fortunately for us though, this provided us with our first metro experience over here. While waiting at the airport we were fortunate enough to have time to snap a nice group picture (Clemson flag missing, but that will be in later pistures!).

From Blogger Pictures

The first day in Rome was whirlwind, we dropped out stuff off at the hotel and hopped back on the metro after our first akward and confusing lunch order at a local bar (yep, most in and out places over here are called bars... and they all have a bar in them, fancy that!). The lunch I got was not quite what I was expecting, but I did learn how to pronouce bruschetta the correct way (brew-skay-tah).

The rest of the day we spent wandering through some gardens, and went to the Burghesse house (sp?) to look at some fantastic sculptures and paintings and the such. After the museo and dinner at a lovely place that we took up 90% of their seating (with 14 of us) we went wandering about and made it to the Trevi fountain pictured below:



At the Trevi foutain, we continued past traditions and tossed coins over our shoulder into the foutian. The first coin is to return some day to Rome. The 2nd coin is to fall in love and get married, and the 3rd coin is fr that person to be Italian!

Later that night after we got back I helped myself to a €1 beer from the mart across the street (tall boy style) and crahsed from exaustion while watching Space Cowboys in Italian. Twas a good night and a good first day.

Enter Friday (today) I woke up bright and early without an alarm clock (phone store was closed Thursday night when I went to get one) at 7am. This gave me plenty of time to get ready for the day and make it to breakfast at 8 when they started serving. The hotel we are staying in has a deal worked out with a bar on the corner (really they are ALL over the place) so we can get a free drink and pastry for breakfast. Boun!

We set off at 9am to hit up some churches (woo woo). The first church was Santa Maria Victoria where I spotted anawesome organ balcony (wont bore you all with the scupltures and paintings), so this one is for you Dad:



Next up (gotta make this quick now) here is a picture of me this morning in front of Santa Maria Pupullo (the 2nd church we went to). I got called °dapper° which is why I wanted to post this (sorry its sideways!).



Laslty this one made me almost die laughing... at the bag return point for the Vatican Museo (more on that later... maybe) I noticed this item that someone checked!
Hilarious!!

Lower Case 't' for time to Leave

Well, its that time... More than a few months have gone by in anticipation and this past week has been a whirlwind of last minute preparations, but luckily, I seem to have not forgotten anything (to my knowledge yet).

In less than 10 minutes I will be walking out the front door not to return for 5 weeks, and that is amazing. I am still anxious to see what the last week of my trip will have in store for me since I have not made many formal plans yet and I have a whole week on my own to survive/have fun in a foreign country (Italy if you missed that memo).

So, look for more updates, I will try to keep people aloof of the shenanigans I am getting into abroad!

Get down with the sickness

First, click here, Listen!

This week I would appear to have come down with "the" sickness sometime Tuesday and defeating it this morning. That makes two nights of flu induced being cold, sweating, running a fever (only confirmed after Wed. night when I actually went out and bought a thermometer) and generally achiness. 

After Tuesday nights's rough sleep, I arrived at work and worked for a few hours before finishing up in the afternoon. I did a few things to prepare for Italy, and eventually took a nap. When I woke up around 8 or so I knew I was in bad shape, so I went to the store, picked up some chicken noodle soup, theremometer, OJ and theraflu! 

Upon retuning home I checked my Temp which was 100.6f which isnt good (I normally run a little low also!). I made up some chicken noodle soup and after downing an entire pot (serves 4... my ass) and soem OJ, I fixed some nitetiem thereaflu and went to sleep early. 

Wed. night wasnt much better, but the morning I only had a 100.4 temp. I had some shells&cheese that I made up the night before (just for this occasion) and took another nap. Apparently 1.5 hours of sleep + shells&cheese kills the flue because I was back down to my normal temps!

Take that flu (maybe H1N1..??) I made it into work around lunchtime and have been going strong ever since. 

200K

So the Caddy recently hit 200K miles... and I am in month 5 of searching for a new vehicle to carry me from point A to point B.

Also, the list of problems it has!

• Power Steering: needs to be filled about once every week or so
• Brakes: they are past the little whining strip that tells you to replace them...
• Transmission: decides what speed it wants to go, randomly holds a really high rev
• Body: still really messed up

Conclusion: I need a new car. Stat.

O.A.R. IN CLEMSON!

'
So on the 18th was the awesome O.A.R. concert in Clemson. This concert is something that I have been working on for months now, starting in January, I have been meeting with groups on campus and organizations, advertising, selling, and planning this concert. 

Once the day of the show got here it was an adrenaline rush from the begining (which I started late (noonish) unusualy. Among the first of things to happen, I finally got to see Littlejohn's Theater curtain system in use with the proscenium, let me tell you, that thing looked amazing. 

The day really kicked off shortly after I got to LJC and kept going form there. The lawn party/festival statrted shortly after my arrival and was a nice job. There was everything from wax hands to the 3-D chalk art to our new student govt. president getting pied in the face. I managed to get with my camera. Coach Dabo was even there with his family! 

Overall the early hours of the day went really well, the lawn party was well attended and i ejoyed being out there a good bit as well. What happened next was amazing though. O.A.R. while driving into Clemson saw a fraternity that had a band playing in front of their house, they asked if they could go and play a few songs at the party. We were going to ceck with the fraternity that ws hoting the concert to make sure (since they wanted to play at adifferent frat house), however O.A.R. said "we dont want to deal with fraternity politics, we just want to play some F*ing music."

It was possibly the craziest time I have ever had on a concert day, it was fun, awesome, and completley random. check out a picture of the crowd at the frat house, it was a great time, and who knows if it will ever happen again!

The rest of the concert day was crazy, we had a fantastic turnout, everyone had a good deal, and one rediculously awesome concert. More on it later.

Its been a while...

So it has been quite a while since i last posted... sorry!

This year has been a whirlwind experiecnce. I started a new major, assumed the highest position on the ladder at work, and stayed active in APO. These activities have kept me quite busys and I havent really thought of this blog in a while.

Onto the recent times, I have done decently in all of my classes, I think...

More importantly I am going to Italy this summer!

From May 13th until June 16th I will be in Italy taking art classes to further my degree (and shorten my time here @ clemson).

There is so much to do in so little time! Aaah!!

(Why am i writing in here???)